The Surrey school board needs $100,000 to feed 854 vulnerable students breakfast in 22 schools, students who otherwise would go hungry. The Attendance Matters Program is designed to encourage them to attend school and start the day fed and ready to learn.

Such is the state of poverty in some North Surrey homes that a family
recently had only a single onion to eat between them all weekend.

“That’s all they had,” said Liane Ricou, an official with the Surrey
School Board.

“We know of families that don’t even have that. They’ll go all
weekend without eating anything,” she said.

Earlier this month, Ricou launched a pilot program to try and feed 25
poverty-stricken families — many of them refugees — whose children
attend Old Yale Road and Lena Shaw elementary schools in the Whalley area.

“We want to get them through the weekend,” she said.

There are at least 10 schools in Surrey that urgently need a program
similar to one in Vancouver, where children are sent home with a
backpack of food on Fridays.

The only money for the program was $100 a week being donated by
parishioners of the Relate Church at 6788 152nd St. and the Guru Nanak
free kitchen.

“We’ve been trying to do something for a year because we’ve been
hearing all these stories. But it’s hard to feed 25 families over a
weekend with just $100,” she said.

“We just haven’t been able to buy what they need. We want to give
them bread, pasta, pasta sauce, tuna for protein, fruit and
vegetables, a box of cereal, milk, but it’s not possible.”

Three weeks in, Ricou asked if the Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-a-School
program could help.

And so Vancouver businessman David Sidoo — a longtime supporter of
the Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-a-School campaign — is donating $10,000 to
provide emergency weekend food deliveries to those 25 families. It’s
part of his family’s $30,000 pledge to this year’s campaign.

“We can’t leave families hungry like this,” said Sidoo, whose
foundation has given more than $122,000 to schools since 2008.

(Since Sidoo came forward, the Relate Church and the Guru Nanak free
kitchen have both pledged $750 a month until the end of June for the program.)

Sidoo also committed $20,000 this week to help feed hungry children
at two Vancouver elementary schools.

Meanwhile, The Vancouver Sun Children’s Fund Board, which supervises
Adopt-a-School, announced that this year’s campaign resulted in 70
schools receiving more than $600,000 in grants to combat the effects
of poverty among schoolchildren.

Most of it goes toward providing emergency school meals and setting
up kitchens in schools that need to feed hungry children. It pays for
clothing and footwear, and items such as lice kits, transit tickets,
baby supplies for student mothers, field trips, and computer systems
for special needs children. It provides bursaries to encourage at risk
students to attend after-school tutoring and emergency funds for
families — such as those in Surrey — without food.

“We would like to sincerely thank our readers for supporting
Adopt-a-School and making this year’s campaign such a success,” said
Vancouver Sun editor and chair of the children’s fund board Harold Munro.

This year, the Adopt-a-School campaign received two major donations
from foundations — $100,000 from the Lohn Foundation and $126,384 from
West Vancouver residents Jack and Leone Carlile.

The Lohn Foundation’s donation was made by Vancouver lawyer and
Holocaust survivor Jack Kowarsky, who administers the fund.

The foundation has donated more than $30 million in the 25 years
since the death of Earl Lohn, a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman
who had amassed a real estate fortune worth $137 million at the time
of his death.

The Lohn Foundation’s donation has been designated by Kowarsky to
feed 800 impoverished children in 22 Surrey schools.

The Jack and Leone Carlile donation was left to the discretion of the
children’s fund board for distribution.

The couple also donated $2 million recently to the Lions Gate
Hospital to build a 10-bed unit for teenagers with mental health and
addiction problems.

“We made the donation to Adopt-a-School because we just want to help
children,” said Leone Carlile.

This province has children who arrive at school each morning hungry,
improperly clothed or without adequate footwear.

Not just dozens or hundreds. Thousands.

All they can hope for is the compassion of teachers to help them
endure these miseries. To their great credit it is not unusual to find
teachers and principals attempting to feed and clothe these children
out of their own pockets.

There was a time the education system could do more for children
stricken by poverty but budget constraints have dried up most of that funding.

It was for this reason the Vancouver Sun began its Adopt-A-School
(AAS) campaign five years ago when it became apparent that some
teachers in Vancouver’s inner city schools were buckling under the
stress and needed assistance.

So we asked our readers to help.

The help that materialized from individual and corporate donors was
astonishing. It is not possible to put an accurate dollar amount on
what readers have contributed because in some cases the help goes
directly to schools. All we can say is that almost $3 million has been
received here every penny of which is designated for schools across
the province.

So here we are another year, another appeal for help.

But what else can we do? Hunger is incessant. You are only separated
from it by thetime since your last meal. And for the poor that gap is
often unmanageable.

In this campaign there will be accounts from teachers who say they
see children arriving at school who have not been fed that morning,
have no food to last the day and who will be returning home with no
prospect of finding anything to eat there either. It is a description
of starvation. How can we ignore it?

You will be told of children feeding other children at school
splitting their lunches so their classmates won’t be left hungry. This
is not something that children should be left to deal with.

Canada has a wonderful international reputation for coming to the
assistance of countries devastated by natural disasters or conflict
and our United Nations commitment is without peer. But we are the only
developed nation that does not have a national food program to feed
its hungry school children. Regardless of party perhaps our
politicians can explain why it’s necessary for children to be feeding
other children. This newspaper asked as much in an editorial earlier
this year. No one, it seems, is in a hurry to answer.

Thanks to the generosity of our readers no school that has asked for
help to feed children has been refused. Often they have received more
than they sought. AAS has set up fully funded breakfast programs, has
provided money for clothing, shoes and boots, lice kits, transit
tickets, field trips, emergency food vouchers to help struggling
families over weekends, helped young mothers attending school with
their babies. We have equipped school kitchens with stoves and
fridges, dishwashers, cutlery, and washing machines, equipped sensory
rooms, rebuilt an abandoned greenhouse so it could grow vegetables for
low income families, provided computers and other technical aids to
special needs children.

In short done all we could to alleviate the awful effects that
poverty inflicts on our children attending school.

Delete update

Share this post

Edit your message

Report campaign

Report submitted

Thank you. We take reports like yours very seriously.
Our goal is to keep the community safe.

Please know that we may contact you for more information,
but that we won't notify you personally of our decision.
If the campaign remains available within a few days, it's
likely that we determined it not to be in violation of our
policies.

Thank you. We've already received your previous report.
If the campaign remains available within a few days, it's
likely that we determined it not to be in violation of our
policies.

Record a video

Upload a video

Nothing grabs attention for your cause like a personal
video. Take a minute or two to record one now.
Record a short video message of support.
Or upload one from your device.
You can preview or redo your video before you post it.

Nothing grabs attention for your cause like a personal
video. Upload a short video message of support.
Upload a short video message of support.
Or record one right now.